1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to speaker systems and more specifically to speaker systems for off-road vehicles, ATVs, UTVs, watercraft and motorcycles.
2. Description of the Related Art
The following descriptions and examples are not admitted to be prior art by virtue of their inclusion within this section.
Auxiliary sound systems made for all terrain vehicles (ATV), utility terrain vehicles (UTV), watercraft, and motorcycles generally offer limited acoustical enhancements, place strain on electrical systems of the vehicles, and lack mounting versatility. In particular, all products on the market are plastic molds made to house a car stereo radio and/or car or marine 6.5 inch speakers. As an alternative to housing a car stereo radio, some use the stereo of the vehicle in which they are installed for an audio signal source. In general, stereos in ATVs, UTVs, watercraft and motorcycles offer relatively little power and, thus, the acoustical enhancement of speaker systems utilizing such stereos are limited. To get more sound output, some auxiliary speaker systems include an amplifier. The inclusion of an amplifier, however, will often cause a lot of strain on the electrical systems of ATVs and UTVs, as well as some watercraft and motorcycles, due to their small charging systems. The strain on the electrical systems can in turn cause problems to the performance of the vehicles. Furthermore, most conventional add-on speaker systems for ATVs and UTVs are quite large, bulky, and unattractive. Some require the removal of and/or an addition of an entire roof, making them difficult and costly to install. Moreover, most conventional add-on speaker systems are vehicle specific and, thus, are not versatile to different makes and models of vehicles or even to different types of vehicles. Lastly, many conventional add-on speaker systems have the speakers firing directly down on your head, so the perception of sound quality is very poor.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to develop new speaker sound systems for ATVs, UTVs, watercraft and/or motorcycles. It would be beneficial for such systems to be all-in-one integrated systems, which are compact and suitable for mounting into a variety of vehicles and furthermore, which have a higher perception of sound quality relative to conventional systems.